Government & Politics Departmenthttp://wagner.edu/gap
Tue, 24 Mar 2015 15:09:01 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1In his own words: Professor Cyril Ghosh, scholar of the American Dreamhttp://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/in-his-own-words-professor-cyril-ghosh-scholar-of-the-american-dream/
http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/in-his-own-words-professor-cyril-ghosh-scholar-of-the-american-dream/#commentsTue, 10 Jun 2014 16:16:00 +0000http://wagner.edu/gap/uncategorized/in-his-own-words-professor-cyril-ghosh-scholar-of-the-american-dream/Cyril Ghosh, assistant professor of government and politics at Wagner since 2012, published his first book last year, The Politics of the American Dream: Democratic Inclusion in Contemporary American Culture (Palgrave Macmillan). It was named one of the best political science books of 2013 by Huffington Post columnist Heath Brown.

Q You write, “Democratic societies can only thrive when people of diverse identities can feel equally free and included in them.” What are some factors in your personal experience and in your studies that led you to that conclusion?

A I grew up in a Catholic household in a pretty secular India. When I was in high school, Hindu nationalists came into the national spotlight as a political entity in India. And, for the first time, I felt that I lived in a Hindu country with a Hindu majority and that Christians, like Muslims, were second-class Indians.

I have since thought about this subject more systematically. The sentence you quote is the result of a lot of thinking and reading and studying that reconfirmed the ideas I have had since my teenage years: no polity can legitimately call itself a democracy unless it makes a serious effort to accommodate and include the various communities of people, often marked by their “difference,” that live within its boundaries.

Q Why did you focus on the American Dream concept?

A It’s not the American Dream part that is the most interesting thing to me; it just happens to be the trope that binds people together. The question that really interests me is: How do you preserve unity or cohesion in multicultural polities? How do you manage difference? How do you maintain some kind of lubrication in a plural society? In so many places in the world, people are fighting each other within countries, because they feel like they don’t belong to the same polity. In the US, we usually don’t do that kind of thing. Because we’re doing something right; or, at least, we’re doing something different.

Q How did your understanding of the term “American Dream” change through writing this book?

A I know less about it now than when it was just an inchoate idea for me; now I know too many different things about the concept. When I first started, I behaved as if the meaning of the term was self-evident and the same for all people. I have since learned that there are at least two iterations of the term. It used to be the post-war idea of this middle-class boom, two cars in every garage, a chicken in every pot. Then something changed in the 60s, with the 1963 March on Washington, the “I Have a Dream” speech. The idea of social and racial justice is also a central part of the dream of equality since then. And then there are other things: What the American Dream means for immigrants, for undocumented workers, for people just trying to make a living. It’s changed in so many ways. It’s become much more complicated than this idea of, oh, you can make it big.

Q Not the Horatio Alger myth anymore?

A Yeah … I’m a big fan, by the way. Ragged Dick, for example, is a great book. I recommend it.

Katie Jo Younkins '11 M'13, who is working on her master's in counterterrorism, studies at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel. Here she recounts a bit of her journey from her hometown in northern New Hampshire via Wagner College to Israel.

My interest in studying in Israel began with the transformational semester I spent at the Rothberg International School of Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the spring of 2010. Wagner had established an exchange agreement there in 2008, and when Professor Steve Snow referred me to the program, it triggered something within me. I had always hoped to expand my horizons while in college.

I was apprehensive about this trip, as I am not Jewish and had never traveled to the Middle East. But my fears subsided as I absorbed the beauty around me while walking to class overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem. I never imagined I would feel so alive and content in a place that was so religiously and politically tense. Growing up Catholic, I never expected to be so warmly accepted by the Jewish people.

Taking Hebrew courses helped me understand the culture of Judaism, while also giving me the ability to converse with community members at my internship at the Pisgat Ze’ev community center. I met wonderful people who answered my difficult questions about Israeli society — especially my questions about the Arab-Israeli conflict and terrorism’s effect on daily life.

During my last undergraduate semester at Wagner, I continued to ask these questions in a course on the Politics of Terrorism. For years, I had imagined my academic career continuing with law school, but the courses I took in Israel and at Wagner redirected my interests toward counterterrorism.

I decided to pursue my MBA in international business at Wagner, and I recognized that I could interweave the analytical and financial disciplines of counterterrorism studies to explore the funding of terrorists. This idea led me to the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, renowned for its concentration in counterterrorism.

Now, I am taking coursework in Arabic, Egyptian politics, legal concerns, crisis communications, and many other helpful areas. I have the chance to study with highly experienced and knowledgeable faculty, such as the former Israeli ambassador to Egypt and other government advisors. Guest speakers such as former Senator George Mitchell and Alberto Fernandez, the coordinator for strategic counterterrorism communications for the U.S. State Department, come here to speak with students.

This program is helping me understand and advocate for mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence in the Middle East, where millions are displaced and fearful. I saw this while traveling throughout Israel, the West Bank, and Egypt, and I can now see the impact combating terrorism can have for all in that region. I believe promoting mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence for all cultures will lead to the creation of a homeland for all.

Relating to people was the most important part of Opotzner's Peace Corps experience.

In 2011, Kelly Opotzner ’07 was living in Manhattan and working at Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s biggest investment banks. Before that, she had been with Morgan Stanley. The vast resources of the city and of a budding finance career lay at her feet.

In October 2012, however, she pursued a new dream to a very different place: Burkina Faso. A landlocked nation in West Africa, Burkina Faso is one of the world’s least developed countries. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Opotzner lived in a two-room mud hut with a tin roof. In the courtyard, which she shared with a Burkinabe family, they listened to the radio and ate dinner, surrounded by pigs, donkeys, and chickens. More than a year into her stay, she finally got electricity in her house. In January, the cool season, temperatures were in the upper 90s during the day.

A few years after graduating from Wagner with a double major in economics and international politics, Opotzner decided she wanted to be in a “different role, one that had more of a social impact.” She wanted first-hand experience with microfinance, and found out that the Peace Corps had a business development program. She was offered an assignment in West Africa.

She spent her days traveling “way out in the bush,” to places where, in some cases, there are no roads, to give tiny loans to people — women, to be specific — who had never had access to capital before, people who are subsistence farmers. These women are setting up home-based businesses, such as making and selling fritters, drinks, or soap. She also worked with a local shea butter manufacturer to improve their business processes.

Her Wagner education helped prepare her for this path, because it was there that she was first exposed to the discipline of economics, and her studies in international politics allowed her to pursue her interests in international development.

But Opotzner says that, contrary to her original expectation, the most important lesson she learned in Burkina Faso was not how to set up businesses or make them run more efficiently, but how to relate to people who live in such different circumstances than what she had ever known.

Opotzner's home in Burkina Faso was a traditional mud hut.

“On a personal level, it definitely impacted me substantially,” says Opotzner. “From a career perspective, it solidified for me what I want to spend my life doing, which is finding the intersections between business interests and social impact. I think that’s really the direction that development should be going in. And I want to help organizations become more financially viable and more successful so that they can reach more people in their communities. It’s given me clear career direction, and from a personal perspective it’s been so eye-opening in every aspect.”

Opotzner returned to the US in February, and she will start an MBA program at the prestigious international graduate business school INSEAD in the fall.

]]>http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/a-new-path-in-business-development/feed/0http://wagner.edu/gap/files/2014/07/Me-at-a-funeral.jpgNew issue of Wagner undergrad research journal features wide-ranging studieshttp://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/new-issue-of-wagner-undergrad-research-journal-features-wide-ranging-studies/
http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/new-issue-of-wagner-undergrad-research-journal-features-wide-ranging-studies/#commentsFri, 11 Apr 2014 18:23:52 +0000http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/new-issue-of-wagner-undergrad-research-journal-features-wide-ranging-studies/Earlier this month, the 24th issue of the Wagner College Forum for Undergraduate Research was published.

The journal has been edited for its entire 12-year history by Gregory J. Falabella, an associate professor of physics and astronomy.

“This issue of the journal is of special significance. It is the first,” Falabella wrote in the Fall 2002 issue. “The Wagner Forum for Undergraduate Research was formed to fill a void. It was felt by the editors that it is important to have an arena where students can publish their research and have a wider audience that can see what types of areas of academic intellect and expertise are being explored at Wagner College. The journal is devoted to publishing empirical and theoretical papers by undergraduate students in all disciplines.”

The Spring 2014 issue, hot off the presses, continues to fulfill that purpose. Its 11 critical essays were written by students from a wide variety of academic disciplines ranging from physics, business and language to anthropology, government, arts administration and history. Perhaps even more telling is that the topics chosen for five of the 11 essays fall well outside the declared majors of the authors, indicative of the interdisciplinary nature of the Wagner College undergraduate curriculum.

One particularly wide-ranging essay was “Behind the Label: Comparison of Garment Sweatshops in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to New York City and Milan,” written by Christopher DeFilippi of Staten Island, N.Y. His study was performed under the supervision of professors Patricia Moynagh and Abe Unger of the Government & Politics Department in fulfillment of Wagner’s senior thesis requirement.

In his introductory paragraph, DeFilippi described the scope of his study:

For the past ten years, the Bangladesh textile and garment industries have nearly doubled in size. Today, there are over 5,600 textile factories with 4.5 million Bangladeshi employed. As factory conditions worsen for workers, exports continue to soar. Bangladesh’s Ready-Made Garment exports make up 80 percent — or $21.5 billion — of the country’s total exports. Textile factories or “sweatshops” similar to those in Bangladesh are found across the world. … The most underdeveloped parts of [New York City and Milan] contain sweatshops similar to the ones found in Bangladesh. Sweatshop workers, who are mainly women, are underpaid and overworked … in unsafe conditions, and some even die in these unsafe factories. As the global garment industry continues to grow, factories across the world are left unnoticed. This paper will analyze and compare worsening factory conditions in undeveloped Bangladesh to New York City and Milan as the garment industry continues to globalize.

DeFilippi says that one of his formative experiences at Wagner College was when he took “Feminist Political Theory,” a course taught by Professor Moynagh, during his sophomore year.

“The seminar-style, discussion-driven class was so engaging, and the ideas so inspiring, that he has made the women’s equality movement his personal focus,” Laura Barlament wrote in a recent Wagner Magazine profile of DeFilippi.

The outbreak of a disastrous textile plant fire in a Dhaka, Bangladesh in November 2012, followed by DeFilippi’s semester abroad the next spring at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy, another center of the global clothing industry, led to a conversation between DeFilippi and Moynagh about the topic for his required senior thesis. He chose to focus on garment sweatshops in Dhaka, Milan, and his home city of New York.

“I really enjoyed writing it,” DeFilippi says. “I’m still amazed by some of the statistics and the conditions faced by these workers in all three cities, not just in Bangladesh. I wonder if people will change their buying habits once they know about working conditions in these plants?”

“Chris’s study was a great example of what we want to see in the senior thesis at Wagner,” said Professor Moynagh. “We want evidence of a student’s mastery of the discipline, in as scholarly a fashion as possible — the accumulation of research methods and styles that, in the end, is our capstone.”

The “mastery of the discipline” demonstrated in DeFilippi’s paper was sufficient to win him invitations to deliver research presentations at five major scholarly conferences, including one in Shanghai, China, this summer.

“We’re still looking for the funding for that one!” Moynagh said, laughing.

Other essays published in the Spring 2014 issue of the Wagner College Forum for Undergraduate Research were:

Patrick Bethel (Waterbury, Conn.) — “Those Who Never Retreated before the Clash of Spears: Motivations for Enlistment in the Irish Brigade in the United States Civil War”

Elizabeth Cohen — “Establishing God: The Effects of Missionization and Colonialism in Vanuatu”

Ayesha Ghaffar (Staten Island), “Language Learning in ‘Room’ ”

Gary Giordano (Staten Island), “The ‘Truly American College’: Establishing a Civic and Democratic Mission at Wagner College and Spelman College in the Interwar Era”

Hard copies of the Spring 2014 issue of the Wagner College Forum for Undergraduate Research can be purchased, at cost, from the Wagner College Press online storefront. The complete issue can also be read online, at no charge, below:

There were many interesting political theory books published in 2013. One I enjoyed was Cyril Ghosh’s book, “The Politics of the American Dream: Democratic Inclusion in Contemporary American Political Culture” (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013), that explores the meaning of this powerful national myth. Ghosh tracks the historical development of the American Dream and answers important questions about its conflicted meaning in contemporary politics. Candidates for public office often evoke the American dream, but Ghosh argues that these evocations are rarely consistent and the definitions often in conflict with each other. Ghosh is an enthusiastic author. His prose reflects an eagerness to share what he has learned, resulting in an enjoyable and accessible read.

Cyril Ghosh joined Wagner College’s Government & Politics faculty in August 2012. Heearned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s in international relations from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India, and master’s and doctor’s degrees from Syracuse University, with specializations in political theory, American politics, and methods. He has taught at the New School, NYU, Reed, Smith and Mt. Holyoke.

Huffington Post blogger Heath Brown is an assistant professor of political science at Seton Hall University and the author of the book, “Lobbying the New President: Interests in Transition,” published by Routledge in May 2012.

]]>http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/ghosh-picked-for-best-political-science-books-in-2013/feed/0http://wagner.edu/gap/files/2014/01/Ghosh-Cyril-16x9.jpgLajka wins Gilman Scholarshiphttp://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/lajka-wins-gilman-scholarship/
http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/lajka-wins-gilman-scholarship/#commentsFri, 22 Nov 2013 20:31:40 +0000http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/lajka-wins-gilman-scholarship/Arijeta Lajka, a Wagner College sophomore from Great Kills, Staten Island, has won the prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, given by the U.S. State Department to support study abroad by college undergraduates who are U.S. citizens.

Lajka is the first Wagner student to win the highly competitive Gilman Scholarship. With over 2,600 Gilman applications reviewed during the Spring 2014 cycle, only 700 scholarships were awarded.

Lajka, who is majoring in English and government with a minor in journalism, was born and raised on Staten Island, graduating from St. John Villa Academy last year. Her family, however, hails from Montenegro, a former Yugoslav republic that achieved independence from Serbia in 2006.

Lajka will spend the Spring 2014 semester studying at the American University in Kosovo, located in the capital city of Pristina. Most coursework at AUK is in English, and transcripts and degrees are issued by AUK’s American partner, the Rochester Institute of Technology.

“I want to be an international journalist,” Lajka said.

She already has a head start on her study-abroad semester, working as a translator/editor/reporter for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. She is aided by her fluency in Albanian, the native language of her family and the dominant language in Kosovo. One of the stories she recently covered was the participation of Kosovar expatriates here in the local elections in Kosovo, which she says will be important in establishing the kind of government transparency required for admission to the European Union.

Lajka says she will be living next semester with another Wagner College student, Rea Ulaj, whose family owns an apartment in Pristina — and if she gets too lonely, it will be easy to visit her grandmother in nearby Montenegro, where she spends almost every summer with extended family members.

]]>http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/lajka-wins-gilman-scholarship/feed/0http://wagner.edu/gap/files/2013/11/Arijeta-Lajka-16x9.jpgNew book by government professor Cyril Ghoshhttp://wagner.edu/gap/uncategorized/new-book-by-government-professor-cyril-ghosh/
http://wagner.edu/gap/uncategorized/new-book-by-government-professor-cyril-ghosh/#commentsTue, 17 Sep 2013 14:21:53 +0000http://wagner.edu/gap/?p=440New book by government professor Cyril Ghosh
]]>http://wagner.edu/gap/uncategorized/new-book-by-government-professor-cyril-ghosh/feed/0Wagner hosts media forum on NYC mayoral racehttp://wagner.edu/gap/uncategorized/wagner-hosts-media-forum-on-nyc-mayoral-race/
http://wagner.edu/gap/uncategorized/wagner-hosts-media-forum-on-nyc-mayoral-race/#commentsTue, 17 Sep 2013 14:18:12 +0000http://wagner.edu/gap/?p=437Wagner hosts media forum on NYC mayoral race
]]>http://wagner.edu/gap/uncategorized/wagner-hosts-media-forum-on-nyc-mayoral-race/feed/0Student heads NYS mock senatehttp://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/wagner-student-is-president-of-nys-mock-senate/
http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/wagner-student-is-president-of-nys-mock-senate/#commentsFri, 12 Apr 2013 19:57:14 +0000http://wagner.edu/gap/gap-news/wagner-student-is-president-of-nys-mock-senate/Dominick Brennan, a 20-year-old Wagner College junior from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn majoring in government and politics as well as economics, will serve as the president of this year’s mock New York State Senate, part of the Senate’s legislative internship program.

While Brennan is the only Wagner student currently serving as a legislative intern in Albany, New York’s state capital, many a Seahawk has preceded him, including Joseph Percoco ’91 and Frieda Menos ’99.

Percoco, who interned in the Senate, ran several campaigns for Andrew Cuomo and served as his special counsel when he was attorney general. After Cuomo became governor in 2011, Percoco was named as his executive deputy secretary. You can read a couple of vivid profiles of Joe Percoco: one in the New York Times, the other in the Staten Island Advance.

Frieda Menos, an Assembly intern, began working as community liaison for Brooklyn Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein during her final year at Wagner College and became Weinstein’s chief of staff in 2005. This January, Menos started a new job as director of constituent services for freshly minted Brooklyn/Queens Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who was formerly a state assemblyman.

So, how does a Wagner College student get into the New York legislative internship program?

“It’s pretty simple to apply,” Brennan says. “Any junior or senior can place an application.”

What happens once you get into the program?

“There are 30 interns in the [Senate internship] program, total, from throughout the state. (The Assembly has as many as 150 interns each year.) After you’re selected for the program, you’re assigned to a senator’s office, at random.” Brennan was assigned to the office of Senator Martin Golden, for whom he had worked before as a campaign staff member.

“Two summers ago, I got an internship in my local congressman’s office,” Brennan says, recalling how he first got interested in politics. “From there, I got involved with the Brooklyn Conservative Party, working out of their state office. Then Senator Golden offered me a job on his campaign [in 2012]. When I found out about the senate internship program, I thought it would be a great way to see the other side of things — I’d seen the political side, why not go see the legislative side?”

What does Brennan do as an intern?

“Right now, we’re compiling a database of our legislation for ready reference when we have meetings with constituents,” Brennan says. He does legislative research for Senator Golden, helps with constituent correspondence, takes notes at meetings — “a wide range of things.” One major responsibility, he says, is taking notes and preparing reports for the senator on meetings of the Senate Civil Service and Pensions Committee, which Golden chairs.

“We get to spend a lot of time on the Senate floor, which is a really cool aspect of the internship.”

Brennan has particular memories of a couple of sessions when he was in the Senate chamber: “The passage of the SAFE Act [requiring universal background checks on gun purchases] … and definitely the budget session — we were there until 4:30 in the morning!”

In addition to Brennan’s duties as an intern, “every Thursday there’s a seminar component. We go down [to the interns’ classroom] for a couple of hours, and there’s a textbook we work from, ‘New York State Government.’ They’ll have reporters, senators, whoever is available come down to talk to us for about 30 minutes; the rest of the time, we have textbook discussion.”

“A big, big part of the program is the mock legislative session,” Brennan said. “Throughout the internship, each of us is supposed to work on our own piece of legislation. Mine would mandate the preparation of a New York State disaster preparation plan, based off of everything that happened with [Hurricane] Sandy.”

Not only has Brennan been elected president of the mock senate — which he will gavel into session on Friday, April 19 — but his piece of legislation has been picked for action by the real state Senate. The first place it will go, procedurally, is to the Senate’s Bipartisan Task Force on Hurricane Sandy, which is made up of senators from all the districts affected by the storm. “I got the idea for writing the bill because I went with Senator Golden to all the task force meetings. … It’s sort of a long shot, but I think it stands a good chance of passage.”

Brennan says the most important lesson he’ll take away from his Albany internship is learning “how the legislative process actually works — how ideas turn into law.”

Legislative internships in Albany run through the entire spring semester. Applications, which must be filed in the fall, must go through Wagner’s long-time campus liaison for the program, Dr. Jeffrey Kraus.

Both the Senate and the Assembly maintain websites for their internship programs, which include descriptions of their particular requirements as well as applications:

Wagner College gives interns a full semester of credit under GOV 390 (“New York State Government and Politics”) and GOV 391 (“New York Legislative Internship”), both of which are 2-unit courses.

Interns must cover their own expenses for lodging and meals in Albany, but stipends are provided that cover much of the cost.

“I had to find my own apartment,” Brennan says, “but the Senate gives you a stipend every 2 weeks to help pay for your room and board.”

Brennan highly recommends the program to others.

“Anyone who’s interested in the least bit in politics, anyone interested in a career in government — this is where you want to be, as far as networking and meeting people,” he says. “It’s a great opportunity.”